Crystal Mac: A prologue novella to Captive Series Book 3 HELL'S HILLTOP (10 page)

When Mac closed the door behind him, giving her the privacy she requested, Crystal moved her shoulder and decided the patch job had held through all the activity. As the tub drained, she wrapped the towel around her body, studied the small bathroom.

Besides the mess they left, there wasn’t much evidence a man used it.
Or a woman, for that matter. DJ’s things took up every inch of space. The colorful toys and panda linens added a charm to the dated fixtures that could never be matched by a designer bath in her book.

Damn. She’d trade anything for this.

“Crystal?”

Mac’s voice through the closed door prompted her to look at her reflection in the mirror. She combed fingers through her bangs, slicked them back. “Yeah?”

“Just checking.”

Naturally. He didn’t trust that she wouldn’t disappear again, but Crystal had no desire to be anywhere else. Mac Truck had just proved what she’d suspected all along. Beneath the scowl, the barreled chest a
nd the master-of-doom façade… he was the key to her survival. The ominous, questionable world outside the basement bedroom she’d lived in for three years wasn’t what she feared would destroy her. It was the monster that lurked within. The person she’d become that loved the dark side more than the light, which didn’t want to lose the edge she held over the common man. To let that go would mean facing Elsa, the person she’d abandoned… and finding no justification for doing so.

But, Mac made her feel not so alone. If he didn’t like
her, he at least desired her… and seemed to appreciate his rare glimpse of the woman beneath the mask.

Face devoid of makeup, forehead exposed, Crystal visualize
d the pair of wire-rimmed glasses that used to rest upon the bridge of her nose. Elsa had been a mousy little thing whose only chance at getting noticed was to ride her beloved sister’s coattails. She’d worshiped Rena, used her as an example for everything she aspired to be.

Disgust stormed her senses as it always did when she thought of those wasted years.
Baring her teeth, Crystal stopped just short of ramming her balled fist into the mirror.

No. She wasn’t ready to face Elsa yet. The people she loved, the dreams she’d made,
the future she could have had… it was all ripped away when
Rena
decided to abandon them all.

With firm resolve, Crystal willed her eyes to remain dry. She would not become a basket case,
not now or ever again.

A few minutes later, she left Mel
anie’s bedroom in an oversized T-shirt and satin panties. Mac had settled down on the hide-a-bed again, in his sweatpants, staring at the ceiling in the dim light over the stovetop. She lifted the sheet, slithered right in.

As she curled up on her side, she blindly reached behind her, found his arm and drew it around her middle. “I need you to keep the boogeymen away tonight.”

Four silent, questionable seconds ticked by, then Mac tightened his arm, drew her in closer. His big body was so warm, so solid as it fitted against her backside. Crystal sighed deeply, lifted her head so his other arm could slip in underneath it. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this safe before,” she murmured, snuggling deeper against him.

Other noises, from the humming air conditioner to the choleric wind blowing outside, faded right away. The TV in the apartment upstairs had been shut off. No traffic rushed by outside. All was fin
ally quiet in Crystal’s world… in the circle of Mac’s arms. But, her eyes still wouldn’t close.

“How is your shoulder?”

“I don’t feel it,” she answered honestly, her voice a foreign, tiny noise. “Quit worrying.”

“How about your head?”

What? Nothing happened to her head. “I’m good, Mac. Right now I’m good.”

When the pillow dipped behind her, she realized he’d been studying her.

“Close your eyes,” he commanded.

The man was getting really comfortable giving her orders. “Why?”

“Just do it. Tell me what you see.”

At first she didn’t want to,
knew what would loom behind that awful curtain of pitch black. Sure enough, when she finally braved it, the picture was so clear she could practically smell the blood. “Domino.”

“Who’s Domino?”

“The dead bastard who tried to bury his blade in my back.”

Mac’s chest hummed against her as he spoke. “Why do you see his face out of the four men you killed?”

“I guess it’s because I knew him better.” The ghost with the twinkly eyes was always trying to charm his way into her pants. It had become a harmless game… until they were forced to choose between friendship and duty. So much for romance.

“When a choice like that comes along,” Mac said, “justification doesn’t mean squat.”

Had he read her mind? And how the hell would he know? “I
was
justified.”

“Right. It’s easy to say, but your head won’t know it for a long time.”

It sounded as if he sympathized with her on a personal level. “How long?”

“Depends on you.”

Well, that didn’t help much. She moved her cheek against his bicep. “How long was it for you?”

She almost thought he wouldn’t answer, but when he did it was a confirmation of
something she already knew.

“Going on eighteen years now.”

Damn. That was a long time. “When you were in the military, right?”

“82nd Airborne Division.”

Her fingers stroked the coarse hair of his forearm as she held it close to her breast. “What happened? Who do you see when you close your eyes?”

The gaping silences that preceded each answer were a blaring indication that this had always been a taboo subject in the past.

“A young boy. He was killed by Haitian police because I didn’t have the orders to fire. I watched the whole beating through my sites. They mutilated his body in front of his father, then killed him, too.”

The skip in her heartbeat
told her to breathe. “That’s… terrible.”

“We were there to stop that shit; military and police brutality against their own people. But the rules of engagement changed once we got there.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “The whole operation was a bunch of political posturing. Flowery words and no action.”

“But
you
didn’t kill that boy and his father. You were following orders.”

“Like I said, your head doesn’t know th
at. A lot of guys came out of that operation with a guilt complex.”

“Is that why it was so easy for you to kill Angelo?”

He rolled a little, faced the ceiling. “I’d have gutted a thousand ghosts with my bare hands in order to save DJ.”

The powerful statement rocked her to her very core. Swallowing back the emotion, she said, “So, it really
was
your first time killing a man.”

“As long as my kids’ parents don’t find out what I did, I’m okay with it.”

Crystal thought about how she’d nearly been his victim, coldcocked at his feet after he’d managed to catch her off guard. “You nearly killed me, too,” she pointed out. “And here we are the next night, freshly fucked and spooning beneath the sheets.”

His head lifted behind her. “As long as we keep things in perspective, right?”

Right. It was just sex, after all. “I was only pointing out the irony, Mac. Don’t worry, I fully expect the cold shoulder in the morning.” His answering silence made her uncomfortable, so she changed the subject. “As far as Angelo is concerned, he’ll probably go down as a John Doe killed by falling debris. No one will know you were even there.”

“Unless someone blabs.” His fingers nudged her ribs.

Crystal smiled slightly. “Is that why you love the daycare so much? Because it rights some kind of wrong in your head?”

With a heavy sigh, Mac lifted his arm to rub at tired eyes. Crystal took the opportunity to
flip over, revel in the comfort of his hard, furry chest beneath her cheek.

“I’ve seen a lot of ugliness in my lifetime,” he said thoughtfully, resettling his arm around her. “Men can be cruel, ruthless, and immoral. They’re dirty, smelly,
hard on the eyes. Women are soft and kind and beautiful. The gentler sex that keeps us grounded.  And kids… they’re our innocents. A mixture of both. I want to shield them from the ugliness, but the truth is… they shield it from me.”

Crystal swallowed hard, fought to keep her voice steady. “You can’t lose that, Mac.”

“No. I can’t.”

His tone made her want to cry. For the first time, she realized how he must have felt when he opened the van doors and found her gone. The betrayal.
The uncertainty that would keep him from his kids. Knowing he’d been exposed to a formidable group of people that would use those kids as a means to an end.

Mac’s end.

His eyes flew open. A real noise had penetrated his dreams, he was sure of it. Dawning light shone through the curtains giving him an estimate of time.

Wait a minute. Hadn’t he fallen asleep with a woman in his arms?

Another knock on the front door answered the question as to what woke him. But where the hell was Crystal?

Her absence was foremost on Mac’s
mind when he left the couch-bed and looked through the peephole. An impatient Brazilian waited with coffee. He groaned, put his forehead to the door.

“Are you going to stand there, or open up?”

How the hell did she know?

“Come on, Mac, you stomp around like a giant, open the door.” The subtle beauty of their neighbor’s accent was killed by sheer volume. Luciana was an attractive woman, yet everything about her was an exaggeration, from the shaggy mocha hair to the nine-hundred-number mentality.

Praying that Crystal remain out of sight, he turned the knob. The aroma of wet leaves from an early morning storm hit him before the smell of 100% aravaca beans.

“Luciana,” he greeted, squinting from the light over the walkway. “It’s a little early.”

Which wouldn’t stop her when she wanted something. Since Mac had moved in, the woman preferred his services to that of the building’s super, and she always bribed him with gas station coffee. She’d offered more, but he was pretty sure the suspension cuffs in her room weren’t for hanging wet laundry.

The cleavage above Luciana’s low-cut blouse jumped with a gasp. “Your face!”

A brief moment of panic hit, and Mac brought a hand up to feel what kind of hideous malformation he’d woken up with. When the absence of facial hair became apparent, his shoulders relaxed. “Oh, yeah. That.”

“Your beautiful mustache, it’s gone!” Bracelets rattled as she shoved one of the paper cups into his hand. “What happened?”

He wasn’t about to explain that, so he held up the coffee. “Did you need something?”

The woman bli
nked away her shellshock. “Uh… yeah, I was wondering if you could… look at my garbage disposal, it’s, uh… making a funny noise.”

He handed the coffee back. “Not this morning. You’ll need to call the super.”

She took in his bare chest with open appreciation and ignored the coffee. “Did I get you out of bed?”

Impatience made him snap. “I had a late night.”

Luciana’s dark eyes narrowed beneath pencil-thin eyebrows. “I heard a lot of commotion going on up here last night,” she said, attempting to peer over his shoulder.

Alas, her true motive behind the visit became apparent. Mac drew the coffee back in and edged the door closed a little more. “Sorry if we kept you up, but it’s not a good time.”

Her jeweled sandal wedged in the door before it could close. “I thought you said you and Mel were just friends.”

Oh
, boy. “That’s right.”

“There was hanky-panky going on, I could hear you two.”

“It’s none of your—”

“I told you, if you ever need to party, you could come to me.”

“Goodbye, Luciana.”